When I played Yakuza Kiwami 2 I said “I’m definitely not going to leave it as long to play Yakuza 3”. That was a year and three months ago! It’s technically true though, I did try to play Yakuza 3 remastered quite a while ago but found it a real slog. The games I had played leading up to this one were the “Kiwami” remakes in a new engine. Yakuza 3 was the first game I played in its original form. The fighting was very frustrating, lacking the depth of the previous games in the series. All the enemies seemed to block every attack without much opportunity to do anything about it as well. Recently Sega released this version, a proper ground-up remake of 3.
Stuff about Yakuza
This is a remake of the second Yakuza game, but it is the third game chronologically. I completed Yakuza 0 about the same time last year and very much enjoyed it. I also played the original Kiwami game years ago. I think this series has absolutely clicked with me now. I very much enjoyed this one.
I just finished Yakuza 0 on the Steam Deck. You play as Kazama Kiryu who gets accused of a murder he didn’t commit, and Goro Majima who is being forced to run a cabaret club and is not allowed to leave his city. The game is really long, both characters stories could be a stand-alone game. They end up tying together in a really interesting way I didn’t see coming though.